


A Life That Meant Something

by Missakat



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missakat/pseuds/Missakat
Summary: Ellie is awake when she arrives at Saint Mary’s.Set at the end of the first game, viewed through the characters of the second.
Relationships: Abby & Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	A Life That Meant Something

His hands push against her chest, his mind a screaming blank as he desperately tries to breath life back into the limp form beneath him. There’s men yelling at them, angry shouts that he ignores as he pleads with her to breathe, to wake up. 

And then Ellie coughs, splutters, heaves up a lungful of water and takes a breath of air. Joel has only a moment to breath himself. He huffs a laugh, tears springing to his eyes as Ellie blinks up at him, when the butt of a rifle slams into his head and sends the world dark. 

——————————

There’s a girl in the hospital. 

Abby arrives back to St. Mary Hospital with her father and Owen. The cleared lobby is busy, buzzing with a tangible energy. In the center stands Marlene, quietly talking with one of the Fireflies besides her. The whole room seems to jump to attention when her father walks in, and he makes a beeline for Marlene. 

Abby feels frozen amidst the chaos.

_“That girl, the one Marlene was talking about.”_

They were waiting for her father, nurses rushing him with clipboards and excited eyes. Abby’s hands are still stained, muddy and red from their animal rescue. 

_“She has an old bite mark on her arm. No signs of infection.”_

Owen’s hand on her elbow is gentle as he guides her to a nearby washroom. She looks at him, questioning. 

“Did you see her?” Abby asks, as when the water runs clear. He glances up at her, busy with his own hands. 

_“Is this real?”_ Hangs, unspoken, between them. 

“She was, uh, hard to miss.” Owen says. He laughs, a nervous sound. “She was screaming like a banshee when they brought her in.”

Abby’s eyes widen, and he backpedals to explain. 

“The patrol that found them knocked out the smuggler,” he turns off the water. “Standard procedure for an unknown, but… She was freaking out until Marlene showed up.”

“So what now?” Abby asks. 

He wipes his hands off on his pants, frowning when he realized that he was still covered in mud. 

“How about we actually get cleaned up? I could go for a shower, maybe grab some food.”  


Abby hesitates, looking back towards where the medical team pulled her dad away.

“I’m sure your dad is going to be busy.” 

Abby nods, “Yeah, ok. You kinda stink like a zebra, anyway.” She smiles.

He elbows her, and she follows him out of the washroom. 

————————

The setting sun was casting the hallways in a golden glow as Abby walked down the empty halls of the children's’ ward. She has two plates balanced in her hands, the steaming food making her stomach growl. 

She passes by one of the nurses in the hall, who gives her a bright smile. Everyone’s expressions had been light today, filling the hospital with an energy she’d never seen among the Fireflies. Despite being resolute in their cause, their dream to fix the world, they’d never had such a concrete source of hope. 

She stops before a door, swallowing down a brief flash of anxiety as she hears the quiet murmur of voices through it. Sometimes seeing her father change from Dad to Dr. Anderson could be jarring. 

Hands full, she ponders how to go about opening the door, when the problem is solved for her. A nurse in scrubs comes rushing out, nearly barreling Abby over, and the two share a smile as the man holds the door open for her. She can’t help but glance at his other hand, in which he’s gently holding a small vial of blood. 

“Oh, Abby.” 

Her dad glances up when she enters the room. He’s slouching forward in a chair, arms on his knees. He looks tired, the bags under his eyes darker than they were that morning out in the sunshine. On the bed next to him sits a girl in a loose hospital gown. 

The girl startles a bit when Abby walks in, tugging on the right sleeve of the gown. It draws Abby’s gaze, heart beat high in her ears. 

_An old bite mark on her arm._

There’s not enough fabric to cover her arm, however, and Abby catches the slightest sight of mottled skin before the girl gives up and crosses her arms close against her chest, defensive.Abby catches her eye again, quickly glancing away at the dark glare leveled her way.  
  
“I, uh, thought you might want some dinner.” Abby says, awkward. “They said you hadn’t eaten since we got in, so I thought we could eat together…” 

She trails off, blushing slightly when she realized she held two plates, compared to the three people sitting in that room. 

“That’s sweet of you, Abs,” her dad stands, giving her a warm smile. “But I’m still on duty. We’ll need to look at the test results, in a bit. “

He pulls a rolling table up to the bedside, taking the plates from Abby and setting them down. “Why don’t you and Ellie eat together, and I’ll go grab something quick from the caf.” 

He turns that warm smile towards the girl, Ellie, “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a break, and some company her own age. Away from all us boring adults and our medical jargon.” 

Ellie wilts a little beneath the attention, absentmindedly rubbing a patch of gauze taped to her inner elbow. 

Abby hesitates. She meets her dad’s eyes, and the selfish little girl in her wants to cry for his undivided attention. He touches her arm, gently, warm, apologizing without words. He had to be Dr. Anderson today, not Abby’s Dad. Abby straightens up, takes in a breath, and gives her dad a smile.  
  
“Um, yeah. Ok Dad.” 

“Is that alright with you, Ellie?” Her dad turns back to the girl. 

“Sure.” She half-heartedly shrugs. 

Her dad turns to leave, but she interrupts him when his hand is on the door knob.  


“Dr. Anderson?” she asks. “Can you find out how Joel’s doing?” 

“Sure, kiddo.” he replies, and then it’s just Abby and Ellie. 

————————-

It feels like a stand off,neither teen sure what to say. Abby stands, awkward, near the doorway, while Ellie sizes her up with bright green eyes. Abby can’t help but stare as well, taking in the bruises mottling her legs, stopping occasionally at the arm still tucked to her side. 

Ellie’s lip quirks, and she releases Abby from the hold of her gaze, in favor of dragging the rolling table closer to the bedside.  
  
“Got any forks?” she asks, pulling one of the plates close to her. Abby blinks. 

“Oh, yeah.” She pulls the plastic wrapped packets out of her pocket. 

It’s like a little relic of the old world, one that Owen had dug out of some old cardboard box one day while on cafeteria duty. Abby tosses one onto the table top, then moves to sit in the chair her dad had recently vacated. Ellie suddenly scoffs, a sound that makes Abby bristle. 

“What?” She asks.

Ellie’s making a… face, but at the question looks away as if embarrassed. Abby raises an eyebrow, and crosses her arms. 

“I mean, I can leave, if you don’t want me to stay…” She moves to grab the plate, but Ellie jumps.  
  
“No wait! That’s not what I… ugh.” She’s flustered, trying to figure out what to say. 

“I don’t want to sit on the bed while you sit on the chair,” she forces out, tugging at the hospital gown again. “It just… feels weird.”  
  
Abby looks at the younger girl, taking in her obvious discomfort. Sitting alone in a room stuck in limbo, the decades of abandonment clashing with the medical sterility brought by its recent inhabitants. She’s simultaneously covered and exposed, dwarfed by the fabric of the hospital gown, but with limbs bare. She’s battered, a couple bruises darkening the visible skin of her legs. She’s still got dirt smudged on her face, and her hair looks ragged. Somehow, in the excitement of getting started on tests, they hadn’t taken a moment to make her comfortable. 

“Ok, then move over.” Abby steps up to the bed, hopping up onto it beside her. Ellie jumps a little at the movement, squeaking as she tilts into Abby as the mattress compresses under her weight. Her gangly elbow bumps Abby’s arm as she scoots over, giving them both ample space to hang out on the bed. Abby sits cross legged, and pulls the table so it hangs between them over the bed. 

“Better?” she asks, tearing open the fork packet. 

“Yeah,” It’s small, but Ellie smiles.

——————————

They eat in silence, but it’s more comfortable with Abby joining Ellie up on the bed. The mythic quality about the immune girl, about Ellie, faded somewhat as Abby watched her ravenously dig into her food. She prods at her own with the dinky plastic fork, unable to help herself from glancing over at the door. 

“I didn’t think there would be other kids here.” Ellie comments, taking a sip of water between mouthfuls of food. 

“I’m 16, not a kid.” Ellie smirks at that, and Abby scowls back, petulant. “I’ve been training with the soldiers, they’re gonna clear me for active duty, soon.” 

Owen was allowed out on patrols by 17. Abby was counting down the days until her next birthday. 

“We have more permanent bases elsewhere. There’s a couple families with kids, our group was just trying to find a decently clean hospital.” Abby shrugs, and spears a vegetable.  
  
“The doctor, he’s your dad, right?” 

“Yeah, he is.” 

“He seems nice.” Ellie pokes at her plate with her fork, hunger apparently abated as she mulled over her next comment. “Do you know anything about how Joel’s doing?”

“Joel?” Abby asked. 

“The man I was traveling with. Some of your guys knocked him out pretty bad.” The fork twirls in her hand. “They keep saying they’ll let me know how he’s doing, but no one’s told me anything yet.” 

“Sorry, I don’t know.” 

Ellie’s face drops at that. 

“I hope he wakes up soon. It’s a little freaky being here alone.” Ellie sighs. “So much happened on the way here, I didn’t really think about what would happen once we _got_ here, you know?”

She rubs her elbow again, picking at the tape holding the gauze at her elbow. Abby looks at her. The questions that have been mounting since Ellie’s arrival returned to the forefront of her mind with full force. 

“So, it’s real then, right?” Ellie meets her eyes. Fear, confusion, and doubt all dance in the bright green. “ You’re… immune?” 

Slowly, a light overcomes the darkness in her eyes, and Ellie’s mouth becomes a thin line of determination. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m the girl that’s gonna save the world.“

———————————

Hours later, Abby finds herself pausing in the doorway to her dad’s office. It feels like her blood is freezing as she listens to her dad’s diagnosis. 

_“It’s intertwined with the brain, there’s no other option.”_

She hear’s Marlene’s reply, hears the dread as her dad pleads for her support. 

_“There’s no way to remove the specimen without destroying the host. “_

She’s listening to Ellie’s death sentence. 

————————-

She’d spent a few hours with the younger girl. It was easier, once the topic of Ellie’s immunity was breached.They swapped stories, the perils Ellie faced on the road from Boston, the fire fights Abby had seen as the Fireflies fled FEDRA territory. 

It was nice, Abby felt, to get to talk to someone closer to her age, who understood feeling so small compared to the world around them. 

————————-

_“If this was your daughter, what would you do?”_

At that, Abby pushes through the door. 

“I brought you some dinner. They said you didn’t come down, yet.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.” Her dad seems to deflate at the sight of her. She places the hot plate on the desk, and waits.

“Look, Marlene-“ he starts, but Marlene interrupts him. 

“Do it.” she says. She’s not looking at them. 

“Thank you”

Marlene, eyes deadened with sorrow, starts to turn for the door. 

“I’m gonna go tell Joel”

“Why?” Her dad seems taken aback by this. Marlene looks him in the eye for a moment. 

“He travelled across the country with her. He has a right to know.” She looks at Abby, then back to her father. 

“Good luck with your surgery.”

———————————

Ellie’s fiddling with a switchblade, pulled from her still-damp backpack. With Abby’s help, they’d convinced a passing nurse to find her things. She brightened up when the woman brought in the bag, and looking far different from the girl Abby had first met in this empty room.

“Do you think your dad can do it?” 

Abby looks up from where she was flipping through the pages of one of Ellie’s comics. Ellie’s trip in the river had caused the ink to run, and they’d been laughing at how the character’s faces had morphed in strange ways.

“Can he make a cure?” Ellie’s eyes are locked onto hers, filled with a quiet intensity. 

The nerves that Abby had been pushing down all afternoon returned with gripping force. That was the question on everyone’s minds, wasn’t it? Can a cure be made? Would all the pain and suffering they put into this quest worth it?

The bedspread is scattered with items pulled from the bag. Fliers, random bits and pieces Ellie had picked up on her cross country road trip, and passed over for Abby to peruse. But some items stayed close to Ellie, treated with a quiet reverence. The knife in her hand, a plastic robot, a dog tag, an old photograph of a man and a young girl. These things, Ellie didn’t share their stories with Abby. 

Abby thinks of the people she’s lost along the way, the people she would die to protect.  
  
“Yeah, I think so.” 

———————————-

Abby sits beside her dad. She knows, if it came down to it, that she would kill for him, just as he would do for her. He heaves a sigh. 

Abby thinks of the girl in the hospital room below them, heavy with the weight of the world on her shoulders. 

“If it was me, I’d want you to do the surgery” she says. 

He looks at her, face contorting as he struggles with the decision. He takes her hand. 

————————————

The surgery will take place the following morning. 

It’s hard to wait, with the idea of the cure so close at hand, but her father insists that the medical team be completely sure of their decision before they take any drastic measures. A good meal in their bellies, a few hours rest, and the time to review their findings with fresh eyes. All important factors in ensuring their success. They only had one sample, after all. One chance. 

Abby thinks it might be so that Marlene has more time to say good bye. 

Abby finds herself lingering near the hallway in the children’s wing, as she left her father’s office for the night. It’s late, and she feels exhaustion dragging at her, but something keeps her from returning to the dormitory. 

The light is still on in Ellie’s room, but it’s flipped off as Abby watches. The door opens and Marlene exits. She closes it behind her, then stands there for a moment. Abby watches as she lets herself slump against the wall, as if she’d finally lost the strength to keep up her strong demeanor. She curls in on herself, lifting a hand to her eyes. 

Abby leaves before Marlene can spot her. 

———————————-

Abby’s woken from a dreamless doze by a burst of gunfire. It’s a familiar sound, in a world like theirs, but they had cleared the hospital of infected weeks ago. But this wasn’t the distant pop of the patrols that walked the campus perimeter. 

She bolts up in bed, rushing to the hallway. Others clearly had the same idea, as the hallway is filled with her fellow pajama-clad Fireflies. The lights are flipped on, bright white blinding her for a moment. Panic thrums in Abby’s chest, struggling to navigate the confusion. The crowd flinches almost as one as another volley fires off somewhere in the hospital. Somewhere, someone returns fire.

People are pulling out firearms, looking at each other with confusion and fear. Abby pushes through, thoughts of her father, of Marlene, of Owen lending swiftness to her feet. The entrance to the dormitory wing is blocked by soldiers in formation, weapons out with the intent to protect their sleeping comrades. A firm hand grabs her, keeps her from bursting from the door and potentially into the line of fire. 

There’s a single, final shot, and it goes quiet. 

They all stand for a few quiet, tense moments, ears straining in the sudden silence. 

“All clear!” A voice calls out, and a sigh of relief flows through the crowd. Someone with a voice of authority amongst them starts directing people back to their rooms, but Abby pushes past and out into the lobby. 

She has to find her dad. 

She darts down the halls, panic jumping higher in her throat as she starts to pass injured men. There’s blood splattering the halls, shattered windows and overturned furniture where it had been relatively clear the day before. Then there he is, standing in the hallway. 

“Dad-“ Abby sees her dad, and then she sees Marlene standing behind him. Her dad turns to face her at her voice, but Marlene’s back stays to her. 

There’s a pistol in her hand, and a body on the floor in front of her.

Her dad rushes to her side, taking her in his arms, but Abby catches a glimpse of the bloody mess of the man’s head before her dad is pushing her face into his embrace. 

“We should get a body bag.” Marlene says. 

She’s still staring at the corpse, at the man before her. 

“Marlene-“ her dad pulls away from Abby.   
  
“Your surgery won’t be interrupted, now,” she replies.

Marlene holsters her pistol, turns and walks past them back down the hallway. She doesn’t look at them, doesn’t look back at Joel’s body slumped against the tile floor. 

———————————-

In the morning, Abby finds herself at Ellie’s door. 

She opens it, quiet, but the girl is already awake, sitting in a chair pulled to the window. The shadows under Ellie’s eyes are dark, like bruises. Her gaze is searching when it meets Abby’s. 

“Hey,” she greets. “No breakfast?” 

Her words are light, but her small smile doesn’t reach her eyes. Abby can’t bring herself to pretend. She shakes her head. 

“Yeah. They said they’re prepping me for surgery, soon.” Ellie looks down at her hands in her lap. “The moment of truth, right?” 

“Yeah.” Abby says. Ellie looks back out the window, to the view of the abandoned city. 

“I watched the sunrise, today,” Ellie starts, and Abby knows that she knows. 

They didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to stress her out for her last waking moments. Ellie didn’t have a choice in the matter, one way or the other. 

They hadn’t told her, but she knew. 

Abby sits down beside her, and the two of them look out over the view. 

When the nurses come to collect her, Ellie gives Abby a last, tired smile. 

“See you, Abby.”

—————————————

Marlene sits with Ellie when they put her under. She’s holding her hand as they inject the IV, as her eyes slide shut. 

She leaves the operating room.

——————————————

The setting sun finds Marlene in the courtyard. 

It’s a peaceful spot, clogged with flowers that long outlasted the people that planted them. 

Abby watches from a nearby window, as sweat gleams on Marlene’s skin. She digs, two deep holes in the dark dirt.

Abby’s dad finds her, hands freshly scrubbed and face drawn with exhaustion. They watch Marlene, together for a moment. He’s a warm presence beside her.

He joins Marlene in the courtyard, shovel in hand. 

She stares at him for a moment, before moving aside. 

Together, they dig the graves. 

**Author's Note:**

> I made the mistake of reading Abby & Ellie fics while trying to work on other tlou2 fics.
> 
> So I had to get some kind of Abby content out of my brain. 
> 
> Check out my Ellie/Dina post-game fix it fic, In Our Bedroom After the War, if you're interested. 
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998477/chapters/65904625
> 
> no beta we die like men


End file.
